There’s no fine line between inspiration and theft when it comes to ideas; there’s a large gradient. Blizzard could probably be suing the pants off of nearly every MMORPG developer out there today if every similarity to another intellectual property was a violation of copyright – not to mention the companies that could probably sue Blizzard. So we should be very careful when considering something a “clone”.

That said, FishyC is the most blatant clone I have ever seen. It’s Angry Birds with fish instead of birds, and treasure chests instead of pigs. They even state on their Kickstarter page that it is “similar to Angry Birds.” No, guys, it isAngry Birds. Continue reading →

This story is as old as the internet itself. Which is to say, very old – in internet years. A young, nerdy boy sitting in front of his computer, playing video games, hoping against hope that he will grow up to be a game-maker himself. Having no real drive to learn actual software engineering, the boy scours the internet for tools that will help him realize his dreams, with no skill or talent required. And having little knowledge means having no grasp on reasonable expectations. So the boy jumps to the biggest possible game he could think of: a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game. The dreaded indie-MMORPG.

Back in my day, these people would do nothing more than get laughed off of every game development forum known to man. Now they have an outlet to try and con people out of money. Damn kids these days.

As it turns out, I’m still alive. Just after my guest post over at Caffeineforge, I got quite the surge of traffic over here. Then I promptly disappeared. Nobody ever accused me of being a savvy businessman. But as I will repeat ad nauseam, this blog is written solely for my own amusement, and I could never have forced myself to capitalize on such an opportunity anyway. I think what makes this blog interesting (to the people who find it to be) is that I’m not trying to appeal to anyone. It’s just a glimpse into part of my (massive, genius) brain.

Which brings us to Henrick Jeanty, who does not have such a brain. His project, Letter Chess, is an obvious indication of that. And so many of my Kickstarter (not to mention common sense) rules are broken here that it’s almost satirical. Continue reading →